When Donald Trump stepped off his plane and onto the Texas tarmac, he approached a pool of reporters awaiting his arrival. “Nice weather. A very beautiful day,” he said. “But a very dangerous border. We’re gonna take care of it.” The former President’s trip to the southern border was more than one of his trademark spectacles; it was designed to highlight a signature campaign theme as he transitions toward the general election.
But his rival, President Joe Biden, isn’t ceding the field. Just as Trump was touring Eagle Pass, Texas, on Thursday, Biden was visiting another border town roughly 300 miles away. By torpedoing a bipartisan immigration reform bill, Biden argued, Trump was trying to engineer a continuation of the crisis for his own political gain. “Instead of telling members of Congress to block this legislation,” Biden said to Trump, “join me.”
The split-screen moment reveals the centrality of immigration as a 2024 election issue. Recent polls have found immigration to be the most important concern to voters, surpassing the economy, inflation, and crime. That doesn’t come out of nowhere. The surveys were conducted as the border situation worsens, with record levels of illegal crossings in recent months. U.S. Customs and Border Protection tallied nearly 250,000 arrests in December alone, up 31% from November.
To that end, a bipartisan group of senators recently negotiated a border security package that would restrict immigration by tightening the requirements to claim asylum and allocating billions in funding to expand border security and increase detention capacity. The proposal was partly fueled by Republicans’ insistence that they wouldn’t pass additional aid for Israel and Ukraine without increased border security. It marked a rare occasion on Capitol Hill, where Republicans and Democrats hardly eat meals together anymore let alone craft legislation.
But once Trump castigated the measure last month, spurring a rebellion…
